International Journal of Agricultural Management and Development
Volume:8 Issue: 4, Dec 2018

The purpose of this study was to assess the farmer's satisfaction with services delivered by Water User Associations (WUAs) and determine the factors affecting farmer's satisfaction with the WUAs. Stratified sampling was used to select 124 farmer members of WUAs in the Gotvand irrigation Scheme (GIS). A researcher-made questionnaire was employed for data collection. Its validity was confirmed by content validity and its total reliability was estimated by Cronbach's alpha as to be 0.73. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics to describe WUAs performance; ordinal logistic regression was also used to determine the relationship between physical, socio-economic characteristics of region context and farmer's satisfaction. Results revealed that although the WUAs performance in operation, maintenance and repair and management is medium, these WUAs are successful in collection of irrigation service fee. Status of maintenance and repair in GIS is a very essential factor in farmer satisfaction with the WUAs and its status is dependent on the strength of WUA connection with government authorities. Therefore, it is recommended that maintenance and repair management is transferred to the WUAs.

Frequent droughts and their consequences result in the loss of groundwater, the deficiency of nutrients, the drying of surface water resources, and substantially more exploitation of the groundwater resources, which, altogether, cause the mobilization of saline waters to groundwater tables. This will impair the capacity of the aquifers and the quality of the water. The VIKOR method was applied to determine the best feasible solution according to the selected criteria including the local rainfall status in different years, soil permeability, land slope, and water quality indicators, including SAR, RSC, salinity for determination of groundwater resources quality and land-use restrictions in the Kashmar Plain in the northeast of Iran. The results of sampling performed on the Kashmar Plain showed that water quality was lost as one moved from the northern groundwater tables to the southern ones. The excessive use of groundwater resources, the downfall of the groundwater level, and subsequently, the increased salinity account for the loss of the agricultural water quality and the land-use restrictions. Furthermore, the results of the model within years 2010 and 2014 showed that if the current form of indiscriminate exploitation of groundwater resources is kept, it will lead to the mobilization of the salinity to the lowly-saline upstream regions. Therefore, it is necessary to focus on sustainable management of groundwater resources, control their indiscriminate exploitation, and minimize the damage to the groundwater tables in the study site. In addition, agronomists should work on limiting the use of agricultural land by modifying the cropping pattern and on using deficit-irrigation methods.

associated with this condition among summer crop growers in Shoushtar Township, Khouzestan Province, Iran. This cross-sectional survey study was conducted from September 2015 to February 2017. The population consisted of summer crop farmers in the Shoushtar Township (N=850). The sample size was determined based on Morgan table (n=150). For analyzing food security level, the 18-item USDA household food security questionnaire, which contains questions that underlie the 12-month food security scale in survey-instrument form, was used. The food security scale was developed based on responses to questions Q2 to Q16 (18 questions). These include both qualitative and quantitative aspects of the household's food supply as well as household members' psychological and behavioral responses. Based on the results, more than half of households (52.67%) experienced food insecurity and less than half (47.33%) indicating that they are food secure. Correlation coefficient results showed that there was significant relationship between the income, educational level, extension education activities, social participation, technical knowledge and food security. Based on regression analysis, income, educational level, extension education activities, technical knowledge and social participation may well explain for 75.43% changes (R2=0.7543) in level of food security.

A bench-scale updraft gasifier was used as a fluidized- and fixed-bed gasification unit in three modes (fluidized-bed at equivalence ratios (ER) =0.2 and 0.25, and a mode in fixed-bed). The experiments were done in five different temperatures (650, 700, 750, 800 and 850oC). To obtain the required data to develop a thermodynamic equilibrium model, the proximate and ultimate analysis were carried out on potato shoot as feedstock. Since the developed model is a temperature-based model, it gives different outcomes in different temperatures. The model gave a completely exact result to predict CH4 in fluidized-bed at ER=0.25. The average error for the difference between each produced gas in experiments and the model showed the best result of the model for CO with the error of just 0.7%. Regarding each experiment data difference with the model data, the model was more accurate to be used in fluidized-bed, especially at ER=0.25 than the other two modes. Moreover, the best performance of the model was obtained for CO, N2 and CO2, according to the average errors. Since the maximum amount of high heating value (HHV) and carbon conversion efficiency (CCE) was observed at higher temperatures, it can be contended that the model has better performance at higher temperatures.

Nowadays, promoting entrepreneurship to train graduates endowed with entrepreneurial traits is considered as one of the new functions of the faculties of agriculture. In this regard, the purpose of this study was to design an appropriate model for entrepreneurial faculty of agriculture in Iran. This study was of descriptive-correlational research type in which a survey method was employed for data collection. The study population comprised all students (N1=19973) and faculty members (N2=713) of all faculties of agriculture in Iran's state-run (public) universities of whom 403 students and 344 faculty members were sampled by multi-staged (three-stage) method. The sample size was determined by Krejcie and Morgan's sample size table. The research instrument was a self-designed questionnaire whose face and content validity were confirmed by a panel of experts. The diagnostic validity of the questionnaire in the case of its latent variables was also confirmed using the average variance extracted method (0.76≤AVE≤0.87). Furthermore, its internal consistency (0.81≤α≤0.93) and composite reliability (0.80≤Pc≤0.91) were confirmed using Cronbach's alpha coefficient. The collected data were also analyzed using SPSS22 and LISREL9.1. The results showed a significant relationship between structural, content, and contextual factors and entrepreneurship of faculties of agriculture. Meanwhile, content factors showed the greatest effect (path coefficient = 0.83) on the entrepreneurship of agricultural faculties. According to the findings, the final proposed model was developed with respect to the factors listed in three categories of education, research, and entrepreneurship for the establishment of entrepreneurial faculties of agriculture in Iran.

This research was carried out to investigate the role of legal, philosophical, economic, environmental, educational attitudes and some personal characteristics in farmers' professionalism in the production of optimal wheat in the north of Khuzestan Province, Iran. The methodological approach in this research was casual relative and applied survey. The data were collected by a survey and a questionnaire as the main research instruments. The samples comprised all wheat growers in Northern Khuzestan. Three hundred and ten farmers were selected by using a Cochran's formula through random sampling out of 23,485 wheat farmers of Northern Khuzestan. Finally, 302 questionnaires were analyzed. The questionnaire was developed from a review of the related literature. The content and face validity of the instruments were established after several times of review and correction by the faculty members of Azad University of Garmsar. The questionnaire and data were analyzed by the help of SPSS v21 software package. The reliability was reported to be 0.81 using a Cronbach's alpha. Stepwise regression analysis indicated the most important variable that accounted for 77.2% of the variance of the dependent variable was the economic variable. The next variables (environmental, legal components, and educational attitudes processes) captured 86.5% of the variance of optimal wheat production.

his study aimed to investigate factors affecting the revenue share of Iranian tomato paste exporting companies. Flexible estimation method was used on a two-dimensional panel data set including 224 observations from 14 tomato paste manufacturing and exporting companies and 16 importing countries during 2005-12. Results showed that value added per employee in manufacturing or exporting companies, and dummy variables (common border, religion and number of documents needed to import) had positive effect on the revenue share of a given company. The import tariff rates of selected countries and distance had a negative effect on the export revenue share of all companies. Accordingly, programmers and policy makers should provide background information about the productivity of labor force in these companies via researching, developing, and promoting production technologies, which will increase the exporting revenue share of this product. Furthermore, by making bilateral and multilateral contracts and agreements, the tariff rates can be reduced to increase the revenue share of the tomato paste export.

This comparative study was conducted to explore achievement motivation and learning approaches of agricultural students and to examine students’ views on educational factors influencing their achievement motivation and learning approaches. The statistical population of this study comprised agricultural students of Tehran University (Tehran, Iran) and Ghent University (Belgium). A sample of 89 agricultural students from Tehran University and 85 agricultural students from Ghent University participated in this study, using the random sampling method. A questionnaire was used to obtain data on respondents’ demographic characteristics, viewpoints on educational factors, achievement motivation, and learning approaches of respondents. Validity and reliability coefficient of the instrument were determined through opinions of professors and application of coefficient alpha (more than 0.8 for different parts). Based on the results, there was no significant difference between the two groups (Iranian and Flemish students) on intrinsic motivation, while the two groups showed significant difference on extrinsic motivation. There were, also, differences between the two groups of students regarding deep approach to learning. This study implied that both similarities and differences can be observed on the factors influencing achievement motivation and learning approaches of agricultural students in different learning contexts. Based on the findings, conclusions were drawn and recommendations were put forth.

The aim of this study was to compare the social capital indicators of members and non-members of cooperatives in Siahkal County. The sample size was calculated by the Cochran formula to include300individuals (150 member cooperatives and 150 non-members of the cooperative) that were selected by the stratified random sampling method. The main tool employed in this study was a questionnaire that evaluated the reliability of internal consistency using Cronbach’s alpha was calculated. In this research, correlation coefficients, t-test, Mann-Whitney test and multivariate regression were used for testing hypotheses. Results obtained from inferential findings indicated that there was a significant positive relationship at 1 percent level between the variables of social cooperation and social interaction, social cooperation and social conflict, social cooperation and informal relations network, social cooperation and trust in others, social cooperation and trust in institutions, social cooperation and social partnership, and finally social conflict and informal relations network. Based on the t-test results, most individual indices of members and non-members of forestry cooperatives showed a significant difference with each other at 1 percent level. Results showed that there was a significant difference between members and non-members of the cooperative in terms of social capital components of forest dwellers except for the component of trust in institutions, which lacked a significant difference. This analysis shows that about 68% of the variation of the dependent variable is determined by independent variables which were significant here.